There is power in the monster, the creature, the vast unknown that troubles the human psyche. At the root of horror fiction are basic, primal, irrational fears that storytellers seek to exploit in the most effective way possible. One method is to employ a creature or monster or mythological figure whose basic properties and attributes are well known, using archetypal monsters to get to audiences’ fear centers that much faster and easier. Recently, four creatures have dominated pop culture in particular: the vampire, the werewolf, the zombie, and the ghost (or some variation thereof with regards to hauntings). In each case, the usage of the creatures has varied to fit multiple tones, themes, and genres, anywhere from comedy to children’s film to action movie to horror. Even though the creatures are ubiquitous in the culture, they’re popular enough and strong enough as concepts that should a filmmaker wish, terror can still be found within them.

So what, then, of the witch? While still prevalent in pop culture, the majority of witch stories tend to lean toward the fantasy genre, with witches acting as sorcerers be they benign or indifferent or evil. The popularity of decades-old TV classic Bewitched still holds sway, as many romantic comedies still revel in that shows’ usage of the witch as a figure in magical realism. Even The Wizard of Oz‘s famous Wicked Witch of the West has been given a sympathetic portrayal in the still immensely popular musicalWicked. The witch, then, is a monster who hasn’t been portrayed very monstrously in a very long time, perhaps because the cultural landscape has merely moved on to other fascinations and fears, but also perhaps due to this country’s sad legacy of witch trials in New England around the 17th century. Robert Eggers’ brilliant new film, The Witch seeks to address all those issues and bring the horror of the witch figure howling back to pop culture, and it does so masterfully.

Like every great horror story (or, indeed, folk tale, as the film’s subtitle puts it) the setup is exceedingly simple. Puritan patriarch William (Ralph Ineson) is responsible for angering the plantation community he and his family live in, and pridefully chooses banishment to the countryside rather than stay. He, his wife Kate (Kate Dickie), young twins Jonas and Mercy (Lucas Dawson and Ellie Grainger), preteen Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) and teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), along with their newborn, make their home at the edge of a large, foreboding wood. Soon enough, the crops fail, the goats start giving blood instead of milk, and the newborn baby is stolen, taken into the woods by a rather gnarly old woman. The family deals with the escalating horrors by attempting to double down on their faith, as William is the radical religious type, but each have their secrets that threaten to tear the family apart as they’re revealed, with or without the help of a witch.

Even though this is Eggers’ first film, his attention to detail pervades the movie, giving it a palpable richness and texture that transports the audience to 1630 and heightens the immediacy of the terror at hand. Eggers rose up through the ranks as a production designer, and everything from the costumes to the sets to the props feel absolutely authentic, giving life to the period. If it wouldn’t disturb the students and get the teachers fired, The Witch could almost be shown in high school history classes as an example of the times. Although the film presents the hardships and squalor of country living as the period would have it, Eggers and his cinematographer Jarin Blashke shoot it like a painting, or perhaps more accurately, a woodcutting, showing off some all-time gorgeous shots. Film blogs and Twitter accounts will be posting and sharing the film’s exquisite close up shots for decades to come, not just for their aesthetic beauty but for the implied terror just out of frame that they conceal.

Since the film’s Sundance premiere last year, the buzz around the film has grown (some might say it’s been overhyped, which is not the film’s problem, even though I believe it can stand up to it). Many films and filmmakers have been counted among The Witch‘s antecedents, but up to now I haven’t seen Stanley Kubrick’s name mentioned. To my mind, the slow burn yet always escalating nature of the film, along with the masterful compositions, best approximate Kubrick’s The Shining. In the movie’s DNA also resides the satanic histrionics of Richard Donner’s The Omen, and one possession sequence not only recalls the verisimilitude William Friedkin brought to The Exorcist, but puts the recent glut of “possession/exorcism” movies to shame by having the terror in the scene be conveyed (as far as I could tell) without visual effects and completely through performance.

Those performances are so good, no effects of any sort are needed (though the film does have a few), since the cast as a whole are excellent. Casting relative unknowns not only allows the terror of the tale more effectiveness, but has the payoff of the best people for the job being able to give deep, rich, lived in performances. Ineson and Dickie feel transported from the period, Harvey Scrimshaw is jaw-droppingly good as Caleb for an actor as young as he is, and if Anya Taylor-Joy doesn’t get her own YA franchise series after this, I’ll be shocked.

After all that, there’s probably one last question you may have: is it scary? As always, that question is hopelessly subjective, as one person’s terrifying is another person’s tame. It’s true that the film isn’t after the date night cheapo jump scare crowd, opting for something much more unsettling, a creep that burrows underneath your skin, perhaps not affecting you right away but hatching when you’re alone at night, walking through the woods. At that, the film has a remarkable power, letting one’s imagination conjure up what the characters may be seeing–and speaking to–just out of frame. The fear factor is multiplied by Mark Korven’s textured score, subtle throughout…until it isn’t, going straight for the throat.

Initially, the film seems to be geared completely toward terrifying the audience, that it seems it may not be any deeper than telling the tale of a pious family led to ruin, by their own hand as much as an agent of evil’s. But look deeper, and there’s a parable, a folk tale as the film would have it, about the horror and pain of religion and virtue versus the naked freedom of wickedness. The characters in the film seek redemption, release, and escape from their woes and sins, and the final scenes have an answer. Not since the ending of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has relieved ecstasy been so chilling. The Witch has many layers to it, and it reveals them (to borrow a word)…deliciously.

This article originally appeared on Pixcelation.com on Feb. 20th, 2016.

Ever since 1999’s The Sixth Sense, a M. Night Shyamalan film has come with certain expectations and hopes, and with each successive film the latter has been diminished as he gained more creative freedom. Things kept going south until the unquestionable low point of the man’s career: the “Marky Mark runs away from killer plants” movie, also known as 2008’s The Happening. Shyamalan has had two “comeback” films since then, a dead-in-the-water adaptation of the popular The Last Airbender cartoon, and the Will Smith & Son vanity project that was the 2013 bomb After Earth. I jumped ship after Signs, a film in which M. Night decided to cast himself in a pivotal role that came off as arrogant grandstanding, inviting people to take potshots at the questionable logic of the plot. After that, his films (the bulk of which are written by him) continued to be ponderous, “gotcha” twist-y tricks, and many wondered if the man could ever pull his career out of its nosedive and just make a purely enjoyable film again.

With this weekend’s The Visit, he finally has.

That statement is not without a few caveats, but it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker utilize his natural talent behind the camera in service of a story that works and has a winning amount of humor and depth to it. The Visit, despite being co-produced by PG-13-jump-scare-horror-powerhouse studio Blumhouse, is like nothing else in the current cinematic horror landscape, despite what the trailer might be selling you. It’s a fairy tale, and Shyamalan makes no attempt to hide that influence within the film. That’s not to say that it’s all heightened dialogue and whimsy, because it’s also a found footage film, and if the movie goes out of its way scene after scene to justify that gimmick, it’s in service of the style being used incredibly intelligently.

Shyamalan earns the fairy tale nature of his story by grounding it in reality early and often, beginning with the basic premise. Precocious and wise-beyond-her-years Becca (played by Olivia DeJonge) has decided to make a documentary about the day that her Mom (Kathryn Hahn) got into a horrible fight with her parents as she was running away with a boy the parents could tell was no good for her. Mom and her parents haven’t spoken since, the father has left the family, and Becca wants to both allow time for her mother to connect with her new boyfriend, as well as seek forgiveness for her from the estranged grandparents. So, Becca and her brother Tyler (a goofily charming Ed Oxenbould) head to Pennsylvania for a week to meet their grandparents, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie). Once there, the kids find their grandparents to be slightly off but not alarmingly so…at least until 9:30 that night, when mysterious and deeply odd sounds emanate from behind their bedroom door. The stranger things get, the more excuses and deflections the grandparents make, because hey, they’re old people. Old people have issues and it’s perfectly normal…right?

Shyamalan has assembled a perfect cast for his story, a necessary trait for found footage since we spend a large amount of time with these people. With a few exceptions (which may be explained away thanks to the ending; no spoilers) the camerawork is both plausible thanks to a hyper film-literate 15-year old and that it’s playful. Shyamalan emphasizes the Haunted Mansion aspects of the spooky farmhouse during the nighttime sequences, which both critique and homage earlier Blumhouse success Paranormal Activity. There’s hardly any score save for diegetic music referenced within the scene or dialogue, and the compositions remain pleasing while still keeping the reality of someone shooting on the fly. Make no mistake: this is a master filmmaker tackling the often obnoxious found footage film.

As the insanity increases, the other shoe has to drop and when the reveal finally comes it is earned (unlike Signs’ water-averse aliens) and yet here is where M. Night becomes his own worst enemy. For the bulk of the film a large amount of intrigue and imagination fills the frame, and it’s at the reveal (or the twist for those of you less charitable) that the walls have to come down, the explanations have to pour out, the bow has to be tied. Although, as I said, the film plays fair and doesn’t cheat (unlike, say, The Village’s “gotcha!”) it still invalidates information the audience has been given previously, and ties that bow a little too neatly. The grounded nature of the film threatens to weigh it down, and though thankfully it doesn’t, it still takes the evocative fairy tale elements and neuters them. That being said, Shyamalan bravely ends the film on an emotionally raw moment (at least before a credits gag) that makes the viewing well worth it. He may undercut his own talent and ambition more often than not, but M. Night Shyamalan, after 16 years, has finally told another chillingly good yarn.

This article originally appeared on Pixcelation.com on Sept. 13th, 2015.

Going to the movies is one of the most communal experiences you can have, provided you go alone. That may sound contradictory, but hear me out. If you go with a friend or a group, you’re there to hang, to enjoy a film as you would at a house party. If you go with a date, you’re likely spending half the time thinking about them or yourself, whether it’s early in the relationship (do they like me? Should I hold their hand? Try to kiss them?) or late (parking was expensive, I hope the babysitter’s okay). To many, going to the movies alone is as anathema as dining alone, but while that experience enhances the isolation, movie-going solo enhances one’s communal experience. And there’s no better genre to have that experience with than horror.

Case in point: I went to see Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno at Times Square on Friday night, solo of course. The theater was open a half hour before showtime as is the norm, and a handful of people had already taken their seats. The staff hadn’t yet officially cleaned the theater, however, so they made everyone get up out of their seats and stand near the aisles as they haphazardly swept the floor. While standing in the aisle, a young man came up to me and asked if I was seeing the film alone. I answered yes. He then asked if I wanted to sit with him in the back. Like any good New Yorker, I was immediately suspicious and shook my head. When he asked why, I came up with a feeble excuse of “because I like sitting down in the front.” We all returned to our seats and as the pre-show started, the man came and sat two seats down from me. “Mind if I sit here?” he asked and I shrugged. We talked a bit, and I explained about how I was a freelance writer for this very website and how “all critics have their special viewing seat” (nice cover for your lie, Bill). I asked him if he was a horror fan and he said yes, that he especially loves “watching the reaction of others around me.” I then asked why he was alone, and he replied, “I don’t have any friends who wanna see Eli Roth films.

Indeed, there aren’t many people in general who want to see Eli Roth’s films, simply because Roth has built a name for himself as a purveyor of the grindhouse exploitation movie. His first film, Cabin Fever, had a premise involving a flesh eating virus which already makes you wince. His second and third films were the first two installments in the Hostel franchise, which along with the Saw films put the “torture porn” sub-genre on the map and launched a hundred editorials on bad taste in cinema. What Roth’s films had that other “extreme” horror films of the day lacked is a real sense of humor, of depth, and of pure entertainment. There was social commentary on the level of George A. Romero alongside some vicious and visceral gore. Roth took a break from filmmaking for a few years, focusing on writing, producing, and acting. In 2013 he returned to directing with his version of the cannibal exploitation horror film, The Green Inferno, which ran into distribution issues and delays that resulted in the film finally being released this weekend. While not ideal, this delay worked in the film’s favor in building its sordid reputation: “how gross is this going to be?”

The answer is “pretty gross” but with the asterisk that it’s much more morally reputable than the films that inspired it, and that hey, it’s a cannibal movie, dummy. Despite many homages to Roth’s hero Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (an infamous rite of passage film in horror circles that acts as an endurance test with its verite violence and real life animal cruelty) The Green Inferno isn’t looking to make you use a barf bag, but rather to bite your nails from the horror you anticipate and eventually witness. The gore is plentiful, but portrayed in an artful way rather than a “no cuts-this is happening” style that provides a thrill ride for the audience rather than a punishment.

The punishment the film doles out is strictly for the characters. College freshman Justine (Lorenza Izzo) is seduced by local campus protests and foreign studies classes enough to want to sign up with an activism group led by Alejandro (Ariel Levy), who plan on chaining themselves to bulldozers about to mow down a section of the Amazon for development. The protest is harrowing but successful, and while flying back to America the plane’s engine blows and the students plummet into the jungle, where the crash survivors meet the isolated tribe they just saved, only still unfortunately clad in uniforms worn to disguise themselves as the developers. From then on its survive, escape or be eaten.

Roth treats the structure of the film in a classical horror fashion, where the kids who dare to go play in the haunted house are replaced by the activists who, according to the film, should leave well enough alone. The film’s attitude towards activism isn’t subtle (at one point a character says “activism is so fucking gay,” so yeah) but it is nuanced, with some kids doing the right thing for the right reasons and others much less so. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t demonize the cannibal tribe, treating them as simply another culture that we can never understand nor disturb. There are the requisite trappings of the traditions of exploitation cinema, such as odd tonal shifts, stilted performances, tropes and archetypes, along with a lack of sensitivity. Many people are offended by the film just by its ad campaign alone, but it’s important to remember that Roth is a huckster: he wants to offend at least some people, to push buttons and boundaries, and like the activists in the film, he’s neither altruistic nor entirely opportunist.

After all, what Roth really wants to do is entertain. And so I took a cue from the stranger sitting next to me in the theater and looked around me at certain points as the film played, and saw a variety of reaction that was never passive. One man clapped and cheered at escape attempts and moments of brutal revenge, another woman shouted advice and criticism of the characters’ actions in the classic “don’t go in there!” tradition. We were all on this roller coaster together. As the lights came up after an odd post credits scene (the film’s biggest flaw-a “Green Inferno” franchise? Huh?) I turned to the young man and asked what he thought. He threw up his hands and said he’d “have to process it,” but he’d look for my review. Well, if you’re reading, man, I hope you liked it. Even if your friends wouldn’t go, for that 90 minutes, everyone in that theater had a shared experience, and that’s worth something.

This article originally appeared on Pixcelation.com on Sept. 28, 2015.